Five years ago today, our lives changed for ever. It was the first day of our very first Maui trip, and after witnessing views like the one below, our lives were never the same.

That’s why, on this day, I was happy to feature my first Maui photo as the Daily Maui Photo today. And that’s also why we’re excited to be going back in three months.

Life Changing, Really?

Yes, really. It may sound over dramatic, but if we think of how much of our lives have been shaped by that first Maui visit, it’s actually pretty true. I could seriously go on and on, but here’s a short list.

• I bought my first DSLR camera to take photos during that first trip. While I was just starting, it turned into a larger hobby than I had imagined. Now, I have 3 DSLR camera bodies, a half-dozen lenses, and a bagful of other gadgets to play with.
• While preparing for our second Maui trip in ’07, I created the Ka’anapali Dreamin’ website and blog as part of a website design course I was taking at the time. Now, almost 350 posts and 4 years strong, it’s one of my largest websites in terms of content and even traffic.
• Our 3rd Maui trip was in ’08, and for that trip, I dabbled around with a Maui Twitter experiment and shared updates from Maui live view my primary Twitter account at the time. Now I operate two other Twitter handles as well: @MauiByPhoto and @DailyMauiPhoto.
• In that same ’08 trip, we brought my mom along to celebrate her 50th birthday earlier in the year. What better gift could you give your mom for her 50th birthday than a trip to Maui?
• The following year, we attended our first #MauiTweetup and met in person some of the great Maui pals I had been tweeting with for the previous year or so. We had another meet up that trip, and later that year, we met with an even larger crowd. Without Maui and Twitter, these are friends we would have never met otherwise.
• Skip ahead a few other items, and come to this last December when our first child was born. We even chose to give him a Hawaiian middle name.

So yeah, one could say life would have been a little different had we’d not taken that first trip to Maui. Not a day goes by where we’re not looking at photos of Maui, talking story with friends online, wearing jewelry from Maui, well, you get the idea.

So much has happened in the five years since that first day we spent on Maui, and who knows where we’ll be five years from now. We know where we want to be, that’s for sure.

Talk Story

Has a trip to Maui impacted your life? Feel free to share your own tales of the Aloha Spirit shaping your future.